Vacuum instability and pair production in an optical setting.

ABSTRACT

In the Dirac-sea picture, the physics of pair production and instability of the quantum electrodynamics vacuum in presence of an oscillating electric field resembles the phenomenon of interband transition of light waves in photonic superlattices induced by a geometric curvature. We realize a binary wave guide superlattice with a curved optical axis mimicking dynamical pair production induced by two counterpropagating ultrastrong laser pulses. Our optical analogue enables visualization of formation of electron-positron pair in physical space as splitting of a wave packet, originally representing an electron in the Dirac sea.